The Reaping: Language of the Liar (16 page)

“We want to help you,” Markus interrupted, his voice calm and collected.  “The only way we can do that is to exorcise the thing which has a hold of you.  And the only way to exorcise something so powerful is to do it with a conclave of Exorcists who are trained.”

Licking her lips, Dorian crossed her arms.  “So you know who he is?  Nic?  You know what he is?”

“I’ve been able to locate him,” Adelaide said, her voice quiet but piercing the tension between everyone in the room.  “It wasn’t easy.  He didn’t want to be found.”

Markus reached under the table and pulled out a small briefcase.  Setting it down, he popped the latches and pulled out a small manila folder stuffed full of papers with drawings, copies of written text, and several documents which looked like they came from websites.

He dug around until he found a crude sketch, and he pushed it toward Dorian.  “Is this him?”

Her heart leapt into her throat.  The sketch was amateur, muddy in some places, but it was him.  From the flowing hair to the eyes, and thin claws which loved to draw her blood.  It was him.  Dressed in his white clothes, the gleaming fangs seemed to jump off the page at her, and unable to help herself, she gave the paper a shove back toward Markus.

“Where did you get that?”

“As I said, I was able to locate him.  He’s been jumping realms with a small army for the past several decades, but he’s been staying close to earth, close to you.”  Adelaide steepled her fingers, touching the tips to her chin.  “He’s a very powerful demon, one of the most powerful we’ve seen take a human.  It’s probably why you’re still coherent.  He’s educated, able to coexist with you without destroying your mind.  But it also means he knows how to fight us.  It’s why they weren’t able to contain him.”

Letting out a puff of air, Dorian sank back into her chair and stared at the stack of papers.  “And all that?  Information on him?”

“And you,” Markus said, closing the folder.  “There’s something at play here, Dorian, and we’re trying to figure out what it is.  That Priest you were working for, he’s had our men followed, and I don’t like that.”

Dorian’s cheeks went pink.  “Nic said Father Stone wanted to hurt me.  That he was after me for some reason.”

“I don’t doubt it.  But I also don’t know why.  We’re looking into it and believe me, if there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”

Dorian deflated a bit.  It wasn’t that she didn’t believe them, but in the end, did it matter?  So what if they found out Father Stone’s motivations?  If she was still vulnerable to Nic, she was a danger to them all, and it only left her with one option.  She believed they had faith in their exorcism, but twenty-four hours wasn’t a risk she wanted to take.  She could feel Nic fighting against the wards, trying to claw his way back into her head, and she couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else getting hurt.

“Is it safe for me to shower?”  She displayed the rust-brown bloodstains on her hands with a grimace.  “I know the symbols are important but…”

“You’re fine,” Lennox said.  “The marks are a spell.  It’ll take more than a bottle of soap to wash them away.”

With a nod, she left the kitchen, the whispers of the group following her up the stairs.  The guilt of what she’d done was overwhelming.  And no matter how much they reminded her it had been Nic, not her, she couldn’t accept that.  It was still her body, her hands, and Dash was injured for the rest of his life.  There would be no recovering from that.  Not really.

As she walked into the bedroom, her head spun and she was struck with a flash of memory.  Staring behind her own eyes, not in control of her own limbs.  She could hear the echo of her laugh as her hands closed around Dash’s torso and she flung him down.  The sickening crack of his spine ripped through the room, and her knees went weak.

She grabbed on to the door handle as she forced herself to breathe, shoving the memory away.  Her stomach was twisted and aching, and she fought the urge to lose what little she had in there all over the carpet.

The desire to wash away the blood from her body was overwhelming now, and she groped blindly for her bags, dragging them down the hall and into the bathroom.  She turned the water on as hot as it would go, and she shed her clothes, shoving them into the furthest corner of the room.

The water was cold when she stepped under the stream, but it didn’t take long for it to turn scalding hot.  It burned, ached, but it wasn’t worse than what she felt inside.  She used almost the entire bottle of soap perched on the edge of the shelf and she scrubbed with a wash cloth until her skin was red and raw.

Everything hurt.  From inside to outside.  The symbols remained on her arms, and although the blood and dirt washed down the drain, she felt dirty.  Tainted.  In all her life, during all her blackouts, she’d never caused devastation like this.  She’d never destroyed someone’s life.  Unable to hold back anymore, she doubled over, unleashing a torrent of yellow, ugly bile.  Her stomach clenched, heaving, and she sobbed as she gripped the handle on the shower door.

Tears mixed with the drops of water, and as she stood up, her entire body was shaking.  The ache from the hot water was becoming too much, so she shut off the stream and stepped out.  Pulling herself together as best she could, she dressed in the first thing she could find from her suitcase, took several deep breaths, then walked into the bedroom.

She had one mission, and one mission only.  She knew Dash kept everything in his carry bags and she had a feeling she’d know it when she saw it.  The
Other
Option.  The one he told her she would have if the exorcism didn’t work.  Something that would let her just go to sleep and not wake up again.

It was the only way, really.

Finding the bags piled near the closet, Dorian bent down and tried to keep as quiet as she could.  She unzipped the first bag, finding it full of amulets, trinkets, daggers, things they’d use in spells.  The second bag had powders and supplies, but not what she was looking for.

Letting out a frustrated sigh, she reached for the third bag when the bedroom door opened, and she spun around, her face going red with guilt.  Briar stood in the doorway, her face drawn, one hand on her hip.

“Lose something?”

Dorian swallowed, her head shaking back and forth as she rose, taking a step away from the Reaper.  “Look, you know as well as I do, there’s only one way out of this.”

Briar blinked at her, then cracked a smile.  “Is that so?”

“You saw what I did!” Dorian burst out.  “You saw the basement.  You saw Dash.  I…”

Crossing the room. Briar went to the bed, reached down for a small carrying case, and pulled out a hairbrush.  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she patted the spot beside her and beckoned Dorian over.  “You know how I told you about the two morons who exorcised me?”

“Yeah.  The ones who died?”

Briar nodded, saying nothing until Dorian gave in and crossed the room.  When she tried to sit on the bed, Briar gave her a shove down on to the floor, situating Dorian between her knees, and picked up the brush.

“Well my story’s a little more complicated than that.  See, my situation was a lot like yours.  I was having trouble hanging on during my possessions.  I’d go weeks without being conscious, and when I was awake, I could hear them.  The demons.  I could hear them talking and laughing and plotting.  I thought that was it for me.  My schizophrenia was going to be the end of me.  Then I was exorcised, and after I became a Reaper, I met Pearl and Evie.”

Dorian tried to turn her head to look at Briar, but the Reaper shoved her back and began to run the brush through her tangles.

“Part of me feels like this isn’t my place to say anything, even if it is my story.”  Briar sighed and paused as she worked a large knot in the back of Dorian’s head.  “Pearl was a really amazing Exorcist.  She’d been found before she was possessed, but it was a near miss.  She was a little more powerful than the others because of that.  She was also Lennox’s mother.”

Dorian didn’t miss the past tense language, and her head bowed forward a bit.  “And Evie?”

“His sister.”  Briar paused and Dorian could hear the smile in her voice.  “I have no idea how he came out such a moron, because those two were amazing.  Evie was a Reaper, like me.  Couple years older, she was saved from possession when she was nine, so she had years of training before I was even tying my own shoes.  She was good, too.  One of the best.”

Dorian had a feeling where this was going, but she wasn’t sure why Briar was sharing like this.  It wouldn’t change her mind.

“One night, we found one of the Demon Generals.  One of the Seekers located it and the man was this big, hulking son of a bitch escaped from a federal prison.  We had him chained in the basement, but the demon was strong.  Stronger than I anticipated.  This was my first reaping, and I swore I was ready, but… I wasn’t.”  Her voice went quiet for a moment.  “He escaped from the chains and went after Evie.  Broke her neck in one fell swoop.  I’ll never forget it.  Her eyes were closed and she was using everything she had, but those giant hands grabbed her face and just…”  She sighed. “Crack.  Dead.  She hit the floor like she was a sack of rocks and the demon jumped out the window.  It took us two weeks to find him.  Pearl put him down like a rabid dog.”

“I don’t,” Dorian began, but Briar stopped her.

“The escape was my fault.  It was
my
spell on the chains but it wasn’t strong enough.  I asked Pearl if I could help mixing the potions and I didn’t put enough burnt sage in.  The spell was weak, the demon exploited it, and Evie died.”

“Jesus,” Dorian breathed.  She reached over and gave Briar’s ankle an involuntary squeeze.

“I thought they were going to hate me.  Throw me out.  Maybe kill me.  The guilt alone was enough to send me off a fucking cliff.”  Finished with the brushing, Briar pushed Dorian forward and began to braid her hair down her back.  “I couldn’t look Pearl in the eyes for days.  She eventually found me in the bathroom with a gun.  She knew what I was going to do.  I was trying to make amends, you know.  An eye for an eye.”

Dorian let out a bitter laugh.  “And she stopped you?”

“No.”  Briar finished with her hair, and gave Dorian’s shoulder a shove to turn her around.  “She told me if I really felt like another lost life was worth it, if it really would help our cause, to do it.  She told me Evie knew exactly what she was getting herself into.  That death was part of the job.  And she told me it wasn’t my fault.  I’d done the best I could.  All I should do was move forward, to better myself so mistakes couldn’t happen again.”

Standing up, Briar walked over to a small bag in the corner of the room and reached in.  She walked back with a small glass vial in her hand and held it out to Dorian.  “If you really think you can’t be better, if you
really
think the only solution is to die, do it.  But if there’s even a shred of you that believes you can beat that thing back and come out of this stronger and better, well, you know what to do.”

The vial was cold in her hands, and the room was even more silent after Briar walked out, closing the door behind her.  Easing herself on to the edge of the bed, she stared down at the liquid in her hands and let herself breathe through the anxiety creeping up her spine.

Briar was asking her to make a choice.  Asking her if she was strong enough to walk out of this alive, and the truth was, she didn’t know.  And the fear that she might not be strong enough, that someone else might get hurt, was overwhelming.  She closed her eyes and through the demon’s memory, she saw Dash’s face.  The anguish and agony in the moment that his spine broke.  But before that, he’d been determined.  He’d been fighting.  He was covered in claw marks but he was still coming for Dorian.  Not to kill her, but to subdue the creature so he could save her.

If she took this way out, his sacrifice, his injury would have been in vain.  She couldn’t ignore the awful truth—these people knew what they were facing.  They understood that death and injury were often their endgame and they accepted it.  Dash had walked into the basement that night knowing they didn’t have enough Exorcists, but cared enough about Dorian’s life that they went ahead with it anyway.  To try to protect her.  To try saving her.

She couldn’t repay him this way.

Standing up, she walked back to his bag and tucked the vial inside, zipping it up with a sharp, fluid motion.  She knew where it was now, and she knew if she had to, she’d take her own life.  But she owed it to everyone who’d invested in her from the moment they found her to at least try.  And she owed it to herself.

Chapter Twenty

The Exorcists would arrive by the following evening.  Dorian was unsurprised to learn how difficult it was to gather a conclave of Exorcists, especially one this large.  After Adelaide assessed the situation, she sent out notifications for twelve Exorcists to join them, and half were in other countries.

Dorian did wonder about the hierarchy structure of these people.  Who was in charge?  How did it work?  Who did they defer to?  Everyone seemed to revere and respect Adelaide, taking her word over that of Mat or Markus, and no one bothered to ask anything of Lennox other than to fetch things or mix up spells and potions.

The entire thing was disconcerting.  Though Dorian knew these people were here for the greater good, the only people she really trusted were Briar and Lennox, and they both seemed to be avoiding her like the plague.

In fact, it wasn’t until after midnight that night that she even saw Lennox again, and it was when he popped in the back room to get a few things from his suit cases.  Mat and Markus wasted no time after arriving in furnishing the place, having couches, tables, beds, and dressers delivered.  They had a team in the basement to clear the mess down there, and when Dorian ventured into the kitchen for something to snack on, she found the fridge and cupboards bursting with food and drink.

She couldn’t sleep, so she was sitting on the bed with a sleeve of chocolate chip cookies and a bottle of water, some show on the laptop playing without sound.  Lennox walked in, startled to find her awake, and he immediately looked away from her.  “Sorry.  Just came in to…”  When he started to turn away, she held out her hand.  “I get why you don’t want to look at me, but you don’t have to leave.  This was your room first.  I can just grab my shit and go.”  She started to pack up but Lennox sighed and shook his head.

“No lass, it’s not you.”

Dorian froze with a frown.  “How the hell is it not me?”

“Briar told me about your talk.  About what you wanted to do.”

Her face flared bright red and she couldn’t help but glance over at the bag with the vial of poison nestled at the bottom.  “Oh.  Um.  Okay.”

Lennox hesitated, then dropped on the edge of the bed a few feet away from her.  “She told you about Evie.  How she died.”

When Dorian answered, her voice was choked in her throat.  “Yeah.  She did.”

“Did she tell you the first time we met was at Evie’s funeral?”  When Dorian shook her head, Lennox smiled a little.  “She thought I was going to kill her.  Tit for tat or something.  She didn’t expect I’d ask to work with her.”

Dorian’s eyebrows shot up.  “You
requested
to work with her?”

Lennox nodded and sat back on his arms.  “I think someday you’ll fully understand it when we all say we know what we’re getting into.  My siblings and I were raised in this life.  My dad died when I was six, throat clawed out by a demon.  My brother’s retired now.  His face was ravaged during a botched exorcism.  Can’t see much more than a fuzzy blur anymore, but he does what he can from home.”

“Jesus,” Dorian breathed.  She understood what he was saying, but it didn’t change things.  “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel responsible for what happened.  And you can’t pretend like you’re not avoiding me.”

Lennox looked ashamed, his cheeks going pink, and he let out a breath.  “I didn’t lose him, Dorian.  Dashiell, he’s going to live.  He’ll have some rehab and whatever the damage is, we’ll live with it.  I don’t love that tosser because he has an able body.  I love him because he understands me in a way most people never can.”  He paused a moment.  “I’m not avoiding you.  I’m scared.  Markus showed me the files on your demon, and he scares the piss out of me.  I’ve never come across something like this.  I’ve never seen a demon invested in a human life, and I’m angry with myself because I underestimated him.  If anyone’s to blame for the cock-up your exorcism became, it’s me.”

Dorian shook her head.  “I should have… I could have insisted we wait.  I knew.  I knew what he was, I knew how strong he was and…”

Lennox reached out, closing his hand around her wrist.  “If you continue to blame yourself, you’re never going to be able to fight him.  You need to understand whatever hurt Dash, whatever hurt me, he’s also hurting you. 
He’s
the monster.  And you can fight him, but you have to believe you can.”

Dorian bowed her head and tried to believe that.  But her entire life had been a mess and she’d been told since she could remember it had been of her own making.  She could have been better, stronger, if only she’d tried.  Let the therapy work.  Stay regular with her drugs.  Overcome her mother’s poor choices.  She could only blame it on bad genes for so long.

“You can do this, lass.  I believe in you.  Briar believes in you.  Hell, even Markus has his money on you or he wouldn’t be here.  If he didn’t think you were strong and valuable, he would have sent me a kill order and that would be that.”

She gulped, feeling the heavy weight of all that resting on her shoulders.  Eventually she took a breath, looked him in the eye, then nodded.  “Okay.  Okay I’ll give it all I’ve got.”

He smiled, the gesture tense, but he pulled her into a hug and kissed the top of her head.  “When this is all over, we can go see that moron who’s got himself all comfortable and spoilt in his hospital bed.  We’ll go steal his lime jelly and watch shit daytime television and annoy the nurses until they kick us out.  Deal?”

She grinned and settled back into her blankets.  “Deal.  But… should I be afraid?  This conclave of thirteen?”

Lennox bowed his head.  “I’ve never seen it this big before, but believe me when I say, I’m with you to the end.”